Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : NEXTEL -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Smith who wrote (9734)	3/25/2001 1:06:30 PM
From: Bux	Respond to of 10227

iDEN lacks the capacity of CDMA amongst other things. The cost to upgrade to CDMA will entail creating a whole new network in separate frequency bands. The locations of Nextel's existing base stations are probably not ideally chosen for the slightly different propagation characteristics of CDMA but will probably be used anyway because of the high expense of acquiring new locations. I can't even guess what the cost will be in actual dollars. Of course Nextel doesn't have much of a choice, do they? W-CDMA isn't ready and due to IPR issues and handset complexity will cost considerably more than 1X and won't allow the graceful transition from iDEN to CDMA within Nextel's existing spectrum. Besides, WCDMA offers no capacity or speed advantages over the CDMA2000 family of technologies. GSM is a dead end even with the over-hyped EDGE "upgrade". Bux